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Enders Game
There is no question that the world wars shaped the United States as a country as well as had a profound impact on everything from literature to music to politics for the next half century. An example of literature that was spawned from the ideals of the world wars is a book by Orson Scott Card. Enders Game is an allegorical novel that was written with the intent to highlight and critique decisions and events that took place during World War II. This is a prime example of how the wars affected pop culture. The Allegory Enders Game takes place somewhere in the distant future with a genius boy named Ender on Earth. Not Earth as we know it though as it has been ravaged by a great war that was initiated by an alien race dubbed the ‘Buggers.’ The war ended in a stalemate and the Buggers have returned to their home planet. While it has been a long time since the buggers attacked, the effects are still obvious. Earth is in a constant state of preparation for the inevitable next war. Card is symbolizing World War I through the great war that took place in Ender’s universe. The beginning of this novel is effective at saying without telling that the time period that the reader is really in is the 20th century. This lets the reader know that what they are about to read is more than what the words on the page say. It could be argued that a parallel can be drawn between every major event in Enders Game and a defining event of World War II. For Example, when Ender is still on Earth he is often bullied and so he does his best to stay out of the spotlight. It is not until he is viciously attacked by a bully that he reacts and begins to fight back using his intelligence and speed (Timeline). This is just one event that takes place within the first few chapters of the novel yet if looked at in the proper light shows that what Card is really symbolizing is Pearl Harbor. We can see this through the parallels between Ender and America; young, isolationist and surprised- and through the parallels between the bully and Japan- older, something to prove and unprovoked. This is just one event of dozens that can be connected to the early 20th century. Analysis It is clear that Card is writing and allegory between Enders Game and World War II, the question is why? A lot of controversial decisions were made throughout the war that, whether necessary or not, need to be discussed in order to ensure proper decision-making in the future. That, in essence, is what Card is trying to do. He is critiquing, through allegory, the morality of the use of atomic weapons on civilians. At the end of the book Ender is nearly done with his training, all that is left now is one series on intensely rigorous ‘training exercises’ via computer in which he will be controlling the entire fleet of spaceships attacking the bugger home planet. He is told that it is pass/fail and that he must win at all costs. In the end, out of frustration due to impossible odds, he decides to use a weapon that when fired at a planet makes it collapse in upon itself, thereby destroying it and all life on it. What Ender isn’t aware of is that this is no training exercise at all and that he unknowingly just destroyed an entire race of sentient life. After it is done his teacher comes to congratulate him saying, "You made the hard choice, boy. All or nothing. End them or end us. But heaven knows there was no other way you could have done it. Congratulations. You beat them, and it's all over (Card 295).” But Ender doesn’t feel the same way he is very distraught about what he just did saying, “In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. I think it's impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves. And then, in that very moment when I love them… You don't understand. I destroy them. I make it impossible for them to ever hurt me again. I grind them and grind them until they don't exist (Card 296)." What is shown here is two conflicting ways of looking at what Ender just did; the ‘them or us’ approach and the ‘there is another way’ approach. The question the Card poses is whether it was necessary to obliterate two entire cities and kill half-a-million civilians or if it could have been done some other way. The problems that faced America then still face America today. George Bush in a 2002 address about the war on terrorism said “After September 11 ... the United States chose coercion over diplomacy in its foreign policy, and deployed a rhetoric of total victory over absolute evil...” This is the purpose for Card moral analysis, he knew that these problems were not a one-time deal and so he provided a deeper look to understand before jumping in to the same events again. Cards Verdict The verdict of Card’s morality analysis is not clear until his next book Speaker for the Dead. Ender spends the whole book looking for a suitable place to cultivate the last remaining bugger as a plea for forgiveness. This book is an extension of the allegory of Enders Game because as the US has spent billions rebuilding Japan and propping it up, Ender spends his whole life helping the Buggers. This shows that what Card id trying to say is that, yes, the decision to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki was inhumane and brash; however, the US recognized it mistake and did its best to right the horrendous wrongs it committed. The sheer level of symbolism and strong personification not only make this allegory clear but also aid it to have an impact it wouldn’t have otherwise had.